15th winter flying IL2 Sturmovik.

[Jumoschwanz]

If it was not so damn cold where I live in the winter, I might not have ever flown this sim as much or as long. Last winter it was around zero degrees farenheight for two months dipping as low as 20-some below, ouch.

If I lived in the tropics I would be at the beach but here we are, and I have had a lot of fun sitting in the basement while it is snowing outside flying around with IL2 Sturmovik.

I always had a good memory and I can remember some of my first flights with this sim, and many of my early missions online. Also I remember many of the other individuals that used to fly IL2 ten to fifteen years ago, they are just about all gone now I believe.

Thank-you to Oleg Maddox and all those who have helped testing and making new patches over the years.

If somebody wants a taste of what flying IL2 was like in it's early days online simply try out the Vinni Puh server, which still runs some of the same maps it ran many years ago.

S!

[dimlee]

By the way, 14th year anniversary of the first release (20 Nov 2001) was just two days ago.
I bought CD with IL2 in March 2002. This game became my main hobby (or my obsession?) for many years. Those sleepless nights...
I don't regret.

[ElAurens]

I picked up IL2 on Dec. 26 2001.

It was a grand run.

I do miss all the fun we had over the Kuban.

Sad that WW2 air combat simulation is dying on the vine.

If only...

[AndyJWest]

I wasn't in from the beginning - I must have bought Forgotten Battles around 2004. Definitely got my money's worth from it, and from '46.

[Jumoschwanz]

Forgotten Battles was still very much an eastern-front flight sim. I remember one well-know online pilot quit after FB came out, he said they ruined IL2 and made it too easy! I was sad to see him go.

Other guys dropped out because they just did not have the talent to fly it online and not get shot down over and over. In the early days of IL2 flying hard settings was very popular, much-much more so than it has been in the last seven or eight years.

It was still a very popular flight sim as the Pacific Fighters and IL2 46' add-ons were released.

In the early days it was funny how certain aircraft were popular and flocked to as they were found to have an edge. In the original IL2 the La-5fn was the go-to aircraft as it was very fast and did everything well.

Maybe some will remember how incredibly popular the Hurricane IIC was for a long time, it turned very well and had it's four very effective cannons, and in early patches it was a bit too fast. Since we were not mature and doing much energy fighting it was hard to beat.

I remember when the P-40 first appeared it would suddenly explode when it was dived above a specific speed. I actually used this in combat making inexperienced or greedy P40 pilots dive after my 109 if they got on my tail.

Aviar and CrazyIvan always had servers up in the IL2 and FB days. There was the great GreaterGreen hard-settings server that was always very-well populated. Then for a long time War-Clouds and Spits vs. 109s appeared. I think GreaterGreen was probably the best-run server of all the old Hyperlobby servers, it was the most fair and professional.

I know there were other popular servers but my memory is fading. I guess I should start writing names of servers and old pilots down before they are lost forever.

I think it was JV44 Rall that was always the best and most renowned FW190A pilot, and I remember there was another well-known pilot that was one of the first to start doing "zoom and boom" flying. GR142 Astro and Pipper were two guys who used to get into Yaks and cover each others six so well they would stack kills up at will as long as someone was dumb enough to get low and slow with them, and there were lots of takers. Astro and Pipper did cry a lot when someone Z&Bed them though...

ROSS was the name of one of the early VVS squads who specialized in flying Yak fighters, and they were generally damn good at it.

I will have to look at some of the old Tracks I have saved from ten and twelve years ago to see if it sparks my memory.

Thanks to those who have chimed in! Please share some old names and memories of battles you had.

[dimlee]

Some names sound familiar...
When I cleaned my bookmarks recently I have found Greatergreen (inactive for many years) and few others. It was good in both versions (or were there three?) with nice community and no or very little abuses. I do remember happy boys on Yak3s. I loved that plane but converted quickly to P39, probably due to hidden masochistic inclinations - ah, those unrecovable spins...

Vulture The Great (VTG) was one the most funny and friendly place to fly. Crimea map with running time (including nights) and "non-flyables" operated with outside views.

Dedicated coop servers developed in more mature years were real breakthrough. It was so cool to meet AI in online fights.

When I reinstalled IL2 after many years of "retirement" and launched IL2 Connect program I realised that not less than 2/3 of my favorite servers have gone.

[Jumoschwanz]

Here is a goldmine of early IL2 server information, a screenshot of IL2 Connect showing the last servers it was connected to probably during late 2002/early 2003. IL2 Connect was software like Hyperlobby that pulled up servers from around the world and let you connect to them:





I spent a long, long time flying on Aviar's dogfight server, and I remember the virtual pilot "Bogey" used to like flying the P-40 when it first came out.

I had no established system for using my views when I first started flying IL2 in the winter of 2001/2002, I used to use the keyboard number-pad to look around and this was very limiting. So I used to just fly low and fast on Aviar's server in the 109G6A/S and wait to find a target that was in front of me I could make a passing shot at. Once I had the Mk108 Gunpods on this 109 and saw a furball up ahead and thought "here is my chance to help". I flew towards it and opened up on a target thinking I was saving someone on "Blue" team, but actually I blew one of my own team out of the sky. It is what noobs do......

[Treetop64]

Still have the original IL-2 disk (and all of the following expansions) that I bought from Fry's way back in 2003 or whatever, and it is still installed on my system, unpatched. I start it up every few months or so just to get some perspective on just how far this game has come.

Still play the game regularly today.

Happy Thanksgiving, btw

[Jumoschwanz]

The original IL2 was on top until March 2003 when Forgotten Battles came out, then a year later about March 2004 the Ace Expansion Pack came out and later in 2004 Pacific fighters was released. It is hard to believe that it was 2006 when IL246' was released!

The original version of IL2 was a lot harder to fly than IL2 46 currently is. I am not saying it is more or less realistic, just that it takes more skill.

A few days ago I set myself up in a 109f4 in the original IL2 vs. a Yak1 and it was a very entertaining and tough fight that followed. I swear the original IL2 AI is tougher, the planes are harder to fly, and the aircraft take more hits before they fall apart.

I hit the Yak1 more than once with 20mm shells and it did not seem to noticeably hurt it's ability to fight. My 109 was hit once. Also I had kept the engine of the 109 on WEP for a lot of the fight and by the time the fight was over from lack of ammo my engine was ruined.

I remember one really well-known and skillful pilot named VSO quit flying IL2 once Forgotten Battles came out. He claimed they ruined it by watering down the flight models etc.. to make it more appealing to "gamers" than to true simmers. I can see exactly what he was talking about when I fly the original IL2 as it is much more challenging to fly and get kills with than the current patch of IL2.

Again not saying it is more true-to-life, just saying that it was harder as a PC flight sim, and I can see that those who learned to fly IL2 in it's original version certainly had a tougher education than those who jumped into IL2 since Forgotten Battles or Pacific Fighters appeared.

[Jumoschwanz]

Here are the manuals for Hyperlobby and Sturmovik Technika's Full Mission Builder manual that I printed out back in the day. Sturmovik Technika was a fabulous website for all things IL2. Unfortunately it did not last too long. I think somewhere another website might have some of it's old pages up to view.